Jail Break
by Trapped in Icy Flame
Summary: What happens when House's ducklings finally get caught doing their illegal searches? Will House bail them out?


This is a short little story, written in gym and English today (it took me longer to type it then to write it), so its not a masterpiece or anything but I hope you enjoy! Honestly though, it has to happen someday right?

This story is dedicated to my dear friend Mimi-darling in the sincerest hope that is will make her feel guilty enough to kick herself into gear and crank out the story that she promised me.

Disclaimer: I asked for the ducklings for Christmas but Santa had a bit of difficulty delivering them, as he does not really exist.

Jail Break

"So do you think House will bail us out?" Chase's voice was very slightly hopeful as he surveyed his colleagues.

"He has to doesn't he? If he doesn't he'll have to do his own dirty work, and we all know how much he hates not being able to blame us." Foreman's voice was cynical.

"Of course he will." It wasn't optimism or false hope in Cameron's voice, she honestly believed it and the hope was very real.

"I've got fifty that he sends Wilson with cash." Chase issued to challenge, confident in their boss's laziness, and their boss's best friend's kindness.

"I bet he makes Wilson pay." Forman was confident in his bosses amazing ability to be an asshole. Both the boys turned to look expectantly at Cameron. Resigned she threw in her bet.

"I bet he makes us wait until at least morning." She was confident in the fact that neither boy would let it go until she made a bet, and that Wilson didn't get off work until two the next morning.

"I knew that one day we would get caught." Chase whined petulantly.

"Of course, we're doctors not professional thieves. One of the neighbors was bound to notice three strange people breaking into their neighbors house with a credit card through the front door."

"What do you want to bet that House has a comment about his ducklings all grown up with street cred waiting for us when we get to work?" Chase asked speculatively.

"About as much as you want to bet that we have to come to work tomorrow." Forman replied "I bet House would make us come in to work during the Apocalypse." His two co-workers considered it for a minute, their own version of House popping up in their head.

"Yeah" Chase agreed.

"Probably" this confession was dragged reluctantly out of Cameron who loathed to speak ill of their boss.

The three were quiet for five minutes or so before Chase pulled out a worn deck of cards, and began to shuffle them. "Where did you get those?" Cameron asked suspiciously, she didn't remember Chase ever having cards in his jacket pocket before.

"They were on the coffee table, I picked them up before they arrested us" Chase admitted, not the least bit repentant. He figured (rightly) that they needed the cards more then the patient who was lying on the hospital bed at this moment, quite possibly dying.

"Robert!" Cameron was outraged for a moment before another question dawned on her. "How do you even have that? Didn't they confiscate everything from your pockets?" She began to pat at her pockets, as if to make sure that in fact there was nothing left in her jeans pocket.

"I think that they got this confused with one of my twenties." Cameron was confused for a brief second. After it began to make sense again she thought about reprimanding Chase (it was generally a bad idea to bribe the law enforcement) but she decided against it. She was a little worried about the corruption in their law enforcement but decided that it was probably in her best interest to not think about it. She was amazed that Chase was willing to spend twenty dollars on a pack of cards, but she supposed he could afford it. She also realized that the cards could make the hours pass a lot faster. Foreman didn't agree that it was Chase's money to waste for the good of the group's sanity.

"You spent twenty dollars on a deck of cards?" His voice was incredulous.

"Yeah, so?" Cameron noticed that Chase sounded more Australian then normal and concluded that he was feeling just a bit defensive in view of Foreman's censure.

"You could have fed a whole village in Africa with that money!" Chase rolled his eyes at that and instead of replying he just turned back to shuffling his stolen cards. Cameron rolled her eyes too, and got up off her cot to join Chase on his.

Chase looked up when he felt the slight dip on his cot. Cameron was sitting down cross-legged. "Who invited you onto my cot?" he made sure she could hear that he didn't mean it, the last thing he needed was to be stuck in the too-small cell with a crying or pissed off Cameron. And because she heard it she just smiled innocently at him.

"Do you know how to play poker?"

"Cam, everyone over the age of twelve knows how to play poker, it stopped being fun as soon as I stopped winning money at it." He smiled at her, to take out any perceived sting in his words, it never occurred to him to be annoyed about needing to be so careful with her. Not the way it sometimes annoyed Foreman and would have annoyed House if he ever bothered to do it anyway.

She pouted anyway. "Oh. How about E.R.S.?" She offered.

"E.R.S.?"

"Egyptian rat screw" Cameron blushed at the word screw, which resulted in a snigger from Foreman and a carefully concealed chuckle from Chase.

Chase raised an eyebrow at the name and decided to play it, if only because it had such an original name. "Sounds O.K." she beamed at him when she heard his reply "So how do I deal?"

"You deal them all out." She put a hand on his arm when he started to deal. "Wait" she turned to Foreman "Do you want to play?"

Foreman looked down his slightly crooked nose at her and said disdainfully, "No."

Cameron visibly deflated. "O.K. then" she let go of Chase's arm. As he finished dealing and went to pick up his cards she grabbed his wrists again "Don't look at your cards." She took a deep breath and began to explain "O.K. so what happens is that we will each take turns laying down a card until one of us lays down a face card. Then the other person will lay down one, two, three, or four cards for a jack, queen, king, or ace respectively. If the person who is laying the cards down doesn't come up with a face card within the amount of cards needed then the other person gets to pick up the whole pile. Also when you see two cards of the same number (or face) played in a row or with only one card between them you slap. The first person to slap gets the pile. Someone wins when they get all the cards, any questions?"

"No, it seems like a pretty simple game."

"It seems juvenile" Foreman butted in.

"Well no one asked you" Chase shot back angrily. "So who goes first in this game?" he asked Cameron.

"Since you dealt I go first" she replied. She then flipped over her first card, a two of clubs. Chase slowly placed his five of diamonds on top of her two. They slowly began to pick up speed as Chase got the hang of it and Cameron stopped going easy on him. Cameron took the first trick with her two queens divided by Chase's jack. Chase took the next two, one with his aces, one with a pair of threes that she didn't even notice was down there until after he had slapped and was drawing it back into his pile. For the first half-hour they were pretty evenly matched. Cameron taking one then Chase then Cameron again. Slowly after the second half-hour Chase began to take control.

Cameron took a short break to stretch her back, like a cat, after she had taken another one of his jacks. "I think this is the longest game of E.R.S. I've ever played." She confessed "You're really good, are you sure you've never played before?" Chase smirked, and they went back to their intense game. Fifteen minutes later Chase secured a solid lead, and in another ten the game was his.

"Well that was…fun" Chase grinned

"Yeah. Lets play again, I'll win this time!" Cameron's voice was hopeful and Chase couldn't resist smiling at her. Well, he could have but he didn't really want to and it would be more trouble then it was worth.

"Yeah, sure. Hey do you know what time it is/"

Foreman answered without even glancing at his watch "It's 9:47, we've been here for six hours." He sounded angry "Did you guys even find anything worthwhile or did we discover nothing productive and have been confined in this shade of hell for no reason?"

They both began to reminisce about their patient and her very messy apartment. "Well she had seven brands of pain killers" Chase volunteered.

"Hmm" Foreman thought about that for a minute, then asked "How many of them were prescription?"

Chase thought about it for a minute before replying "Three." They all thought about it again "there was also a bottle of Zoloft."

"That wasn't on her chart" Cameron replied." She also had jumbo tampons." When her colleagues just stared at her blankly she elaborated. "She's 5'2 and 110 pounds." They were still looking at her blankly so she elaborated again. "She shouldn't need tampons that large. She shouldn't be bleeding so heavily. It's neither normal nor healthy." She paused here for breath and to allow her colleagues to get what she had realized. "That plus the painkillers could mean that she was having abnormal periods. When you add that with the dizzy spells and the weight gain plus the mood swings could point to Policystic Ovary Syndrome."

"Whichcould also explain her rapid heart rate, as well. Well done Cam!" Chase was genuinely pleased, and he hoped that she would notice his pleasure and not the death ray that Foreman was sending her.

"That just seems wrong." Foreman commented calmly.

"Because it isn't a rare and freakish disease? Because it is actually fairly easy and fairly cheap to cure?" Cameron asked.

"Well, yes." Foreman must have realized how that sounded because he was quick to attempt to explain what he meant. "I mean if it was that simple would she have even come to our department? Wouldn't House have realized what it was before?"

"What's with the sudden surge of faith in House? Besides maybe, he is as spoiled as you are. Maybe he is so used to the rare and bizarre that a fairly normal one wouldn't be easy to solve." Chase's voice was condescending. When he saw that Foreman was opening his mouth to reply he just turned back to the girl on his bed. "So, another game?" She sent him one of her thousand-watt smiles.

"I'd love to." She began to deal her hands flying over the cards. "You start this time." Chase won that game quickly because his opponent kept glancing at Foreman. He sighed and began to shuffle the cards when Cameron interrupted him. "Let's play Go Fish!"

He rolled his eyes, that was a juvenile game. On the plus side he could always count on Foreman to disappoint her "Cam we can't play Go Fish with two people." She sighed.

"I guess your right." She turned her big blue eyes on Foreman. "Eric, will you play with us?" She widened his eyes even more and stuck up her lower lip. "Please?" She put a note of pleading into her voice. Then she blinked a couple of times. It was the first time Forman had ever been exposed to Cameron's pleading puppy face, and he found that even he could not resist the pleading in the younger woman's eyes.

"Fine. But since I'm playing we might as well make it fun. I'll put ten dollars on the first game." Cameron and Chase agreed to the bet and the cards were dealt.

"Do you have a two?" Chase paused to see who would react, sure enough Foreman tightened his grip on his cards almost imperceptibly "Foreman?" Foreman growled and reluctantly handed the card over to Chase. "How 'bout you Cam', do you have a four?"

She smiled at him and chirped "Go fish!" He glowered at her and drew his card, the queen of hearts.

"Cameron do you have a queen?" Foreman watched her hopefully as she pretended to ponder her cards.

"Go Fish!" Chase smirked "Robert do you have a … nine?"

"Damn" He handed her the card in question.

"Eric, an ace?" he handed her the card. "What about a seven, still you Eric." He glowered at her as she took the card from his had. "Robert a six?" He handed the card over reluctantly. "To finish it off, how bout a five Eric?" As she drew the five cards, the boys exchanged looks. "Eric an eight?"

"I swear, you're like Superman or something." He paused and looked her over "You would tell us if you had X-ray vision right Cam?" She laughed a bell like tinkling laughter that made him smile.

"She might just be cheating." Chase glared at her over his three cards. She glared back at him. He almost laughed at how weird angry looked on her kind face.

"A king Chase?"

"Oh back to Chase are we?" He handed her the card.

She didn't respond. "How about a four Chase?" Her voice was cold.

"Aw, come on Cam, I was just kidding! It is eerie you know?" He handed her his second-to-last card.

"How bout a two Eric?"

Foreman took great pleasure in saying "Nope, Go Fish!" She pouted and drew a card. The boys breathes a sigh of relief

"Fished what I wish!" Both men groaned as she picked up another five cards, where she immediately put down two pairs onto her freakishly large pile. "Eric do you have a three?"

"Nope. Go fish!" This time when she picked up the card she kept it in her hand and both men sighed in relief once again.

"So Foreman, got a queen?" Foreman groaned as he handed over his last card to Chase. He then picked up five more cards, and waited for chase to do the same.

The game ended with Cameron at twenty-three pairs, Chase in a close second with three pairs, and Foreman sat unhappily on none. Both the men glared at her before declaring it double or nothing. They played for hours more attempting to beat her. The last game they played they had managed to close the gap a little with Cameron only managing twenty-two pairs. They ended up owing her one hundred and three dollars, a month of clinic duty, and a proposal to either Wilson (for Chase) or House (for Foreman), but she probably wouldn't hold them to that promise.

At 12:12, Cameron began to yawn. By one o'clock (the hour when everything seems like a good idea) her head was resting on Chase's and her legs were tucked close to her body with her feet tucked under Foreman's legs. Within five minutes of securing herself this comfortable position, she was fast asleep.

They boys looked at each other and at the same time attempted to shift their smaller, curvier friend out of that awkward position. But as soon as they tried to move her she clenched her hands in Chase's pants and moaned angrily. They decided to stop trying to move her, it had been a long hard night. Within the hour both of them had fallen asleep. Sometime while they were sleeping they had moved closer together and Forman's head had fallen onto Chase's shoulder, and Chase's head fell to Foreman's.

When Wilson stopped by to pick them up Cameron was curled into a small ball on the laps of the two boys, her hand clenched in chases pants, and the boys rested their heads on each other. For a moment, he forgot that it was three a.m. He forgot that he had just worked for thirty-six hours. The forgot that his best friend had made him pay for the release of his ducklings. He forgot that both he and House had completely overlooked the patients disease (Policystic Ovary Syndrome) because it seemed too easy. And not for the first time he was glad that he had a camera phone.


End file.
